1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to computer-assisted nutritional systems.
2. General Background
Pets have varying nutritional needs, depending on their species, breed, size, age, health status, and other conditions. Because of this variability in dietary needs, it has been difficult for pet owners and veterinary professionals to design and implement appropriate pet-specific diets. This difficulty is compounded by the use of human foods for pet nutrition, since the wide variety of available foods creates a great number of dietary permutations.
To design an appropriate pet-specific diet, it is first necessary to assess the nutritional and caloric attributes of the pet's current diet. Then a nutritional profile should be generated, detailing the pet's specific nutritional requirements. Next, various diets could be measured against the pet's nutritional profile, to determine which diet or diets are appropriate for the pet. Finally, it would typically be desirable to supplement the diet, and ideally the supplement that is selected would be compatible with a wide range of diets.
Unfortunately, pet owners and veterinary professionals do not currently have the tools to satisfactorily complete any of the tasks listed above. There is no comprehensive database containing the nutritional attributes of foods that are commonly fed to pets, including commercially available pets foods and selected human foods. Without such a database, it may be difficult to assess the nutritional properties of a pet's current diet.
Also, there is no tool or system currently available that can generate a nutritional profile for a wide variety of pets, based on a pet's particular attributes, such as breed, age, health-condition, etc. Instead, the current methods for creating a nutritional profile are cumbersome, and often rely on guesswork.
Nor is there any comprehensive and computerized tool that can assess the extent to which a particular diet fulfills the requirements for a particular nutritional profile. Instead, pet owners and even veterinarians must consult with veterinary nutritionists to complete the difficult task of designing a diet for the special needs of a particular pet. This process is difficult and time-consuming, and becomes even more challenging when the pet requires intravenous nutrition or tube feeding.
Similarly, there is currently no way to create a custom supplement formulated to provide the greatest benefit to the most diets. Current supplements typically contain a percentage of the recommended daily requirement without regard to the foods with which the supplement will actually be used. This generates the possibility that the supplement will be deficient for some nutrients and excessive for others.